


Rainy Days and Mondays

by richmahogany



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-16 00:04:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3467024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/richmahogany/pseuds/richmahogany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joss Carter is not having a very good day. Finch, of all people, makes her feel better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rainy Days and Mondays

**Author's Note:**

> My very first fic featuring Joss Carter (and a tiny bit of Fusco). Set some time before Carter and Fusco have realized that they are both working for Team Machine.

The alarm started blaring almost as soon as her head hit the pillow, or so it seemed to Joss. She stretched out her hand and batted at the clock until it was silenced. Now all she could hear was the rain lashing the window. Last night she had been tossing and turning, kept awake by her worries about her son. Taylor was on a school trip to Paris, and during the first three days he had sent her at least one brief text message a day. But there had been no messages for two days now. No calls or e-mails either, and he had not replied to her own messages. She had spent the Sunday getting increasingly worked up about it, and now it was Monday morning and still no relief in sight. Joss sighed, propped herself up on her elbow and switched on the radio, just in time to hear Karen Carpenter sing: “Rainy days and Mondays always get me down…”

“You said it, sister,” Joss thought, “and it looks like I’m in for a double whammy.” She sighed again and got up. A short, sharp shower helped to wake her up, and by the time she entered the kitchen she felt at least marginally ready to face the day. She spooned coffee into the filter and switched on the coffee machine. There was a popping noise, the kitchen light flickered, and the coffee machine started to emit an odor of burning plastic. Joss swore and ripped the cord from the socket. Great, no coffee then. What else was this day going to throw at her?

Well, if she couldn’t make any coffee, she might as well go to work straight away. She grabbed her coat and umbrella and ventured outside. An icy wind whipped round the corner, buffeted her umbrella this way and that, and by the time she got into her car, her pant legs were soaked. She cranked the heater up and eased the car into the morning traffic.

When she arrived at the precinct, Fusco was already there. He looked her up and down, and said: “Hey, did you swim to work?” Joss growled at him. He grinned and ducked his head, then he got quickly out of her way as she made a beeline for the coffee.

She came back with a large mug and took a few greedy sips. Fusco stared at her.

“You must be desperate,” was his comment.

“I am,” answered Joss, “and if you knew what a desperate woman is capable of, you’d be more careful.”

Fusco grinned again, put on his reading glasses and went back to stabbing at his keyboard.

Joss checked her phone. Still nothing. It was all made worse by the fact that she couldn’t do anything. If Taylor didn’t reply to her messages, there was no other way to contact him. She wished she had the number of Taylor’s teacher, or at least of one of his friends. But as it was, all she could do was sit and wait, and imagine the worst. She opened a file and tried to distract herself with the contents.

Half an hour later the phone rang. She jumped. Finally! But it wasn’t her usual cellphone. It wasn’t the office phone either. No, it was _that_ phone. Of course, it would be. Just one more thing to spoil her day. She cast a glance across the desk, but Fusco wasn’t there at the moment. She flipped the phone open.

“What do you want?” she snapped.

“Good morning, Detective,” said the calm voice at the other end. “I’m sending you a name. If you could check his previous convictions – I’m sure he has them – and specifically, whether his girlfriend has taken out a restraining order against him, that would be very helpful.”

“Would it, now?” she said sarcastically. “You realize I’m at work, don’t you? I mean, actual work? That I get paid for? Why should I jump every time you call?”

“Because it is important,” Finch answered, just as calmly as before. “Because a young woman’s life might be at stake. We need your help.”

There was a soft click, then the cell beeped as it received the message Finch had sent.

Joss looked at it with mounting anger. All these things she did for them – they just requested, and expected her to do it. Couldn’t Finch just hack into the police computer and get what he wanted? It wasn’t like he hadn’t done it before. What did he need her for? She asked herself, not for the first time, why they had roped her into their secret mission anyway. Did they really need her? Or was it more to control her? Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer?

She gave them what they wanted, of course. After all, there really might be a woman’s life in danger, and she didn’t want to be the one to let her down. She sent off the information and then tried to forget about it, as she concentrated on her real work again.

The day had obviously started as it meant to go on, hitting her not with major catastrophes, but with a barrage of minor irritations. The captain hounded her for a report she hadn't finished yet. She spent ten minutes frantically searching for a file until it turned out that Fusco had taken a look at it and left it on his own desk.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I got distracted, put it down and forgot about it. It happens!”

Joss was angry at him for his carelessness, though. What had he wanted with that file anyway? It wasn’t relevant to any of his cases. She was somewhat mollified when he went out to get some lunch and brought back a delicious bagel for her.

The rest of the day was largely filled with paperwork, tedious but necessary. At least towards the end of the day, she could cross quite a few items from her to-do list. Just as she allowed herself to feel some satisfaction, her secret phone beeped again.

“Please meet me 7 pm” was the message, followed by an address.

“What now?” she thought. She was just about ready to go home. Couldn’t they leave her alone? She looked at her watch. 6.30. Oh well. She would go there, she decided, and then she would give them a piece of her mind.

The address turned out to be a small café, tucked away in a side street. Plush carpets, dotted with low tables and armchairs, a bar on one side, and a comfortable couch in the corner.

She spotted Finch sitting at a table at the far end, reading a book. When she came up to him, he stood up politely, said “Good evening, Detective” and waited for her sit to down, but then just sat across from her in silence. Joss didn’t say anything either. He had asked her to come here, so he could explain himself. “I just wish he wouldn’t stare at me like a dead fish every time we meet,” she thought.

Finch had signalled the waitress when Joss came in, but the woman had just nodded and winked at him, and busied herself behind the bar without coming over. Eventually she made her way to their table, but instead of taking Joss’ order, she put a large mug of hot chocolate topped with whipped cream in front of her. Joss picked it up and took a sip. In an instant, she felt herself transported to a better place. The chocolate was heavenly. It was smooth, velvety, not too sweet. This was the real deal, none of your powder-and-hot-water concoctions. If anything had ever deserved the name “drinking chocolate”, it was this. It warmed her insides, and she realized that the drink had been laced with a generous glug of vodka.

She looked at Finch again, her mood lightened but still wary of what he might want from her.

He was silent for another minute before he spoke.

“It has…I have been made aware that perhaps I have been somewhat remiss in expressing my appreciation for the assistance you have rendered us,” he finally said. His face was unreadable, but Joss knew him well enough by now to guess that he was embarrassed or at least slightly unsure of himself. The big words were a giveaway. Finch wrapped himself in his vocabulary like Linus in his security blanket.

So, he was sorry for not having said “thank you” enough. Well, that’s a start, Joss thought.

Out loud she said: “Well, I guess it’s good to know that you do appreciate what I’m doing. Because, to be honest, I don’t really know why I’m doing it. I’m a cop, I’m supposed to uphold the law. You are breaking the law left, right and center, and I know it, and that means in a way I am breaking the law, too. I know I let myself being sucked into your affairs, but I’m asking myself, not for the first time, if I can continue to be involved. You never tell me anything anyway. I don’t like being kept in the dark about what I’m actually helping you with.”

Finch thought about that for a moment. He took out his phone, tapped it a few times, and handed it over to Joss. It showed a snapshot of a young woman, thin with stringy black hair, with a fearful expression on her face. In her arms she held a crying baby.

“Tiffany Jones and her daughter Britney,” Finch explained. “Her partner was released on parole. He had abused her before, and he was threatening her again now. With the information you gave us, we…arranged to have him re-arrested, not just for parole violation, but with new charges added. He’s going back to prison, and when he comes out again, she will be safe beyond his reach. That’s what you helped us achieve, Detective.”

Joss regarded the picture thoughtfully. Of course she was happy that this woman’s life had been saved. But it was the principle of the thing – having a case explained for once did not change her dissatisfaction with the arrangements.

She handed the phone back to Finch and said: “It’s just that I don’t really know what you need me for. You could just as easily have gotten the information yourself, without involving me at all. I know you can hack into any computer you want. I know I just said I didn’t want to be too deeply involved, but having to do bits and pieces whenever you happen to call, that’s not very satisfactory either. Most of the time I only get to pick up the pieces when your one-man army has gone on a rampage again. I don’t see how I even make a difference. I’m tired of just running errands and tidying up after you. Or are you just keeping me involved to keep an eye on me? Because if it’s that, I’m calling an end to this right now.”

She congratulated herself for remaining reasonably calm, despite the frustration that was bubbling up inside her. Her little speech must have had some effect, because Finch remained silent for several minutes. When he spoke again, he said:

“What do you know about Chaos Theory, Detective?”

Well, that had certainly come out of left-field! But Joss decided to play along and answered:

“That’s the thing with the butterfly, isn’t it? A butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil and you get a tornado in Texas, something like that?”

“Yes, that is the image that has penetrated into popular culture, and as images go, it is not a bad one. Chaos Theory was originally a mathematical concept which was then applied to other fields, such as physics, biology and sociology. The basic tenet is that a small change in initial conditions can cause a big change in outcome. Your contribution, Detective, is that small change in initial conditions. As you rightly say, I could have obtained the information I asked for myself. But it would have taken longer, and it might have kept me from other vital work on this task. Without your help, we might not have been able remove the threat to Ms Jones in time. But it is not always as concrete as that. The fact that you are on our side, that you are not working against us, that we can count on you - that is the change in initial conditions which has a large impact on the outcome. And believe me when I say, it changes the outcome in our favor. It might not always be obvious, but I ask you not to remove your assistance, because it could be the factor that determines the success or failure of our endeavors.”

It was now Joss’s turn to remain silent as her mind sorted through that. Finch always had a roundabout way of expressing himself, but when she cut through the verbiage, what he seemed to be saying was: you are important to us, you really do make a difference. And she could see that he was serious about it. He had made an effort to find a way of saying it that would convince her, and even if his chosen method left something to be desired, she could believe the sentiment behind it.

She smiled at Finch: “Are you saying I’m the butterfly?”

To her surprise he smiled back: “Yes, Detective, I think that’s what I’m saying.”

Joss sighed.

“Alright then, I believe you. I’ll stay with it.”

“Thank you, Detective.”

And that was that. His mission accomplished, Finch put enough money on the table to cover both their drinks and another chocolate for Joss, if she wanted one, and gathered up his coat. But he didn’t leave yet. Instead he turned back to Joss and said:

“If you are worried about your son – the reason he hasn’t been in contact is that his cellphone was snatched from a table at a street café at the Place de la Bastille on Saturday. It apparently hasn’t occurred to him to borrow someone else’s phone or to make use of internet cafés, which do exist in Paris as well. Maybe when he comes back you could alert him to those possibilities. In the meantime, rest assured that he is safe and has suffered no harm apart from the loss of his phone. Good night, Detective.”

He pushed himself up from his seat, hung the coat over his arm and left.

Joss didn’t know whether to be grateful or outraged. Finch had obviously kept tabs on Taylor. She was resigned to the fact that he was spying on her, but Taylor should have been out of bounds. On the other hand, she couldn’t deny that she was relieved to know that nothing had happened to him. And maybe it wasn’t that Finch was following Taylor all the time. More likely he had just noticed the lack of communications from him on her phone and had gone to investigate the cause. On balance, she was probably more grateful to Finch for setting her mind at rest.

She couldn’t quite shake the feeling, though, that she had been somehow manipulated slightly. The drink she was certain to enjoy, the subtle flattery, the assurances of gratitude – they were all designed to bring her round to their side. And it had worked. Tonight she had re-committed herself to Harold and John’s illegal enterprise. It could only make her life more complicated in future, and she wasn’t sure that she had made the right choice. But she had realized that they were trying to help people, and that’s what she had signed up to as well when she became a cop. And, manipulation or not, she believed Finch when he said that her contributions were appreciated. A butterfly, indeed, she thought. Well, why not? There were worse things you could be compared to.

“I’m back where I started,” she said to herself, but she had to confess that she didn’t feel so bad about it. And if she had to put up with the hardships, she might as well enjoy the perks. On a day like this, she more than deserved it. She signalled the waitress and ordered another hot chocolate.


End file.
